Fantastically beautiful winter weather. Okay, I know weather isn’t an activity. But really it’s so worth noting at the top of the list – it’s been a fabulous winter so far, with great snow for skiing and blue skies.

602 Shellfish – our lovely home, with all of the snowy, wintery goodness.

My mom has been working at Picture Alaska, an art gallery here in Homer. They were looking to fill this bit of wall space for the December First Friday, and so some photographs by yours truly were featured! Nothing sold from the ‘show’, but it was pretty neat to see my pictures up on the wall of the gallery!

In early-December Inletkeeper had our winter in-person board meeting up in Kenai. It was a fairly long two days, but made most-fabulous by the generosity of our new board president, Ben Jackinsky. Ben owns a used book store in Kenai, and he let us meander about for hours on Saturday night. Sunday afternoon I was waiting for (my) Ben and Mikey to pick me up, and Ben let me hang out in the closed book store by myself. With the light of the setting sun streaming in, I was pretty sure that I was in heaven.

Ben, Mikey, Kaya, Pemba, and I stayed in Moose Pass that Sunday night. Trail River Lodge happened to be open, hospitable, with food and affordable mid-winter rates. We enjoyed some beer, chicken wings, and football, and slept well in preparation for skiing the next day. On Monday we headed north to Manitoba Mountain, a baby backcountry ski hill where we could either a. practice our turns (for Ben and I), b. rip it up and look damn fine doing it (for Mikey), or c. run about panting and terribly excited from start to finish (for Kaya and Pemba).

Shortly after we returned to Homer, I began volunteering again with Big Brothers Big Sisters. I was matched with a most-fabulous 6 year old – Willow. She is incredibly outgoing, smart, and wicked funny. A few weeks ago we went ice skating – it was her first time. And I’m still talking about it, weeks later.

A MAJOR discovery in the New Year has been five-minute-a-day bread. I found this book at the library and brought it home without thinking too much about it. Ben absorbed it with some serious interest – here’s the deal: you get a bucket (we have a 2.5 gallon white plastic bucket), put all of the bread ingredients in it together (enough for 4-8 loaves)(not 12 loaves. we learned that the hard way), mix ‘em up, and put it in the fridge. Over the next two weeks you can just pull off a grapefruit-sized glob, shape it into a round loaf, and bake it at 450 for 40 minutes. Ben took the reins for his first two loaves the other night….not too sure what happened here, but they still tasted good.

We finished putting the side boards, the end walls, and the top on the high tunnel. I’ll post more pictures on that at a later date, but needless to say – I’m Excited. Between the tunnel being up and the seed catalogs pouring in, I can hardly wait for the incredible amount of work facing us this spring.

Oh, and I almost forgot Kaya’s “encounter” with the sea otter. Yep, sea otter. Low tide, Ben, Kaya, Pemba and I were running from Diamond Creek to Bishop’s Beach. Kaya searched out two, yes – two, separate sea otters in tide pools at the low tide line. The first encounter she left unscathed, but the second…blood. After a couple of weeks of antibiotics, she’s a-okay. Albeit with some gnarly badass scars. But I’m happy that she still has her eyeball (although Ben really enjoyed re-enacting what it would have been like had the injury been more gruesome)(and it’s true that I reenacted why I believe under no uncertain terms that it was a tooth, and not a claw, that did the damage).